Why your DoorDash promotion is not showing to customers

DoorDash is unusual among delivery platforms because restaurant operators are as likely to see a promotion they did not create as to lose one they did. DoorDash runs Boosted Promotions, where it enlarges an existing merchant discount and pays the difference: “You fund only the promotion you create” while “DoorDash funds the additional boosted amount”. Its order payload then reports the split field by field. And for offers DoorDash pays for entirely, it sends nothing at all, stating that “We will NOT send data for fully DoorDash-funded promotions.”

We do not publish a downtime figure for DoorDash. Our July 2026 measurements cover the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and DoorDash trades elsewhere, so no number of ours belongs here. The DoorDash specific fact worth having instead is that a campaign is launched rather than submitted for review: its Ads Manager instructions end with “Once you’re ready, launch your campaign”, and there is no approval step published between that click and the offer running.

What is a DoorDash Boosted Promotion, and why does the discount look wrong?

It is DoorDash increasing your offer at its own cost, and it is the reason a campaign can appear on the app with numbers nobody at the brand chose. DoorDash gives the worked example: “say you’re running a promotion where customers ‘Spend $30, get $8 off.’ When boosted, your customers will see ‘Spend $30, get $12 off,’ with the additional $4 being funded by DoorDash.” Percentage offers move on both axes, since “a promotion set at ‘20% off up to $5’ may be increased to ‘30% off up to $8′”, and the result is tidied up because “Final customer discounts are rounded up to the nearest dollar or the nearest 5% increment.”

The merchant does not pay more for the enlargement. DoorDash states that “Your promotion fees remain the same, whether or not your promotion is boosted” and that “the DoorDash-funded boost isn’t included in your promo fees”. Eligibility is not published: “Eligibility depends on factors such as promotion type, timing, and the specific boosted period.” Source: help.doordash.com.

How does DoorDash report who funded a discount?

By splitting it into named fields on the order, which is the most explicit funding data any platform in this category publishes. The payload carries merchant_funded_discount_amount, documented as the “Merchant-funded portion of the discount (in cents)”, doordash_funded_discount_amount, the “DoorDash-funded portion of the discount (in cents)”, and total_discount_amount, the “Promotional value applied (in cents)”. DoorDash enforces the arithmetic between them: “merchant_funded + doordash_funded = total_discount”.

The exclusion is the part to plan around. DoorDash states that it “will send promo data in the order payload for all merchant-funded and co-funded promotions” but “We will NOT send data for fully DoorDash-funded promotions.” A chain reconciling from its own integration therefore sees every discount it paid for and none of the discounts DoorDash paid for, which understates how heavily the brand was being promoted. Campaigns are identified by promo_id, “Unique identifier for the DoorDash promotional campaign”, and can carry an external_campaign_id, a “Campaign reference ID as defined by the merchant”. Source: developer.doordash.com.

Why does a DoorDash promotion cover some stores and not others?

Because store scope is chosen explicitly, and because the two structures DoorDash offers behave differently. Its campaign setup names them side by side: “Corporate standard” lets you “choose all stores, specific stores, or upload a CSV of store IDs to select which stores can participate in the Promotion”, with “a limit of 100,000 stores at the campaign level”, while the alternative is “Franchise opt-in”, a separate flow in which the store is the party that joins.

That second structure is where a national campaign quietly becomes a partial one. A franchisee who never opts in has not failed at anything, and no error exists anywhere, but the brand’s coverage map has a hole in it that only shows up on the store page. Nothing in the campaign screen distinguishes a store that declined from a store that was never asked.

Which DoorDash customer segments can see your promotion?

Five in the Merchant Portal, and DoorDash defines them by recency: “All Customers: All DoorDash customers within your delivery radius”, “New Customers: Only customers who have never ordered from you”, “Existing Customers: Bought from your business within the last six months”, “Lapsed Customers: Haven’t bought from your business within the last six months or longer”, plus a “Smart targeting” option described as targeting “the most valuable customers for your business”.

Ads Manager, which is where larger advertisers build the same campaigns, adds a second layer on top. Within each ad group DoorDash offers targeting by “Customer Behavior”, “Customer Profile on DoorDash” and “Customer Interest”, plus dayparting and store subsets, and ad groups “share the campaign budget, with spend distributed based on performance”. Stacking those choices narrows an audience quickly, and an offer nobody can see is indistinguishable from an offer that did not launch.

Who pays for a DoorDash promotion, and what triggers a charge?

The merchant funds the discount and pays a marketing fee, and only on orders. DoorDash states it plainly: “You’re only charged for a promotion when it leads to an order, not for views or clicks”, and sets out what that charge contains: “Cost includes the customer discount (% or $ off) or delivery fee ($4.99) plus the DoorDash Marketing Fee”. Budget behaviour is stated in the same place, that you can run capped or uncapped budgets, and that an uncapped promotion “allows every eligible customer to redeem the promotion”.

There are also two different places to build the same campaign, and they are not the same product. A single store or a small group is directed to the Merchant Portal, where the path is “Log in to the Merchant Portal”, “Click on the Marketing tab”, “Tap Run a Campaign”. Larger advertisers work in Ads Manager, which adds ad groups, CSV store selection and the franchise opt in flow. A brand comparing notes across its estate can therefore be looking at two different screens with different controls, which is worth establishing before anyone concludes that a setting is missing.

What changes a DoorDash campaign without anyone at the brand touching it?

Smart targeting, which DoorDash describes as automation that “automatically adjusts your audience to improve campaign efficiency at no extra cost”. It is “Enabled during campaign creation for a Discount Promotion type” and “Can be turned off at any time from the Campaigns tab under Marketing”. A campaign can therefore keep its name, its stores, its dates and its budget while the set of people being shown the offer is chosen by the platform rather than by the brand.

Between boosted amounts the brand did not choose, fully platform funded offers the brand never sees in its data, and audiences adjusted automatically after launch, the record of what customers actually saw on DoorDash is not fully recoverable from the merchant’s own systems. Kitchain (kitchain.co) records the offer rendered on each DoorDash store page daily, which captures the platform funded and boosted discounts that DoorDash deliberately keeps out of the order payload.

For DoorDash itself, its markets and its store states, see our profile at kitchain.co/aggregators/doordash/.